Michelle Williams & Paul Dano Join Director Steven Spielberg at TIFF 2022 Premiere of 'The Fabelmans'

Star Wars composer John Williams is reported to have been made one of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s very last knights, with the honour one of the final awards approved by the late monarch before her death a fortnight ago.

For decades, the big rumor around “Poltergeist” is that credited director Tobe Hooper didn’t actually helm the film’s production. Instead, the story goes, Steven Spielberg ghost-directed the movie, and that’s why “Poltergeist” feels so much like an Amblin Productions film.

Michelle Williams is shaking things up as she begins her campaign for the 2023 Academy Awards.

Clayton Davis Not every race is what it seems, and so it goes with the first category decision of the season. Variety has confirmed Michelle Williams’ work as the piano-playing mother in Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” will be campaigned for the Oscars in best actress, instead of supporting as many pundits had speculated. The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, won the prestigious People’s Choice Award and became the undisputed frontrunner in the early days of the awards season. One of the highlights of the cast was Williams’ turn as Mitzi Fabelman, a lover of the arts who serves as an inspiration for her filmmaking son Sammy (played by newcomer Gabrielle LaBelle).

The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival came to an end on Sunday and with it the announcement of its always-hyped People’s Choice Award. And it was no surprise that Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” took the prize voted on by festival moviegoers.

Steven Spielberg is enjoying another triumph, with his quasi-autobiographical drama “The Fabelmans” earning this year’s People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival came to an end on Sunday and with it the announcement of its always-hyped People’s Choice Award. And it was no surprise that Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” took the prize voted on by festival moviegoers.

The People’s Choice Award from the just wrapped 2022 Toronto International Film Festival has gone to Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans.  First Runner Up is Canada’s own Sarah Polley’s Women Talking. And Second Runner Up was Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The Documentary Award went to Black Ice, and the Midnight Madness winner was Weird: The Al Yankovich Story             .

Toronto Film Festival returned in spectacular fashion after two years of virtual premieres or limited capacity screenings. The parties were packed (which may lead to COVID outbreaks down the road, but… that’s showbiz?), the red carpets were glittering and the atmosphere was electric, bordering on euphoric, as director Rian Johnson’s acclaimed sequel “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story,” Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans” and the Harry Styles-led romantic drama “My Policeman” debuted to blockbuster-starved audiences in Canada. Hollywood seemed eager to make up for lost time. So, as the curtain comes down on TIFF, here’s a look back at the major trends and takeaways from the 10-day festival.

Trend alert! The 2022 Emmy Awards looked like a winter wonderland as some of Hollywood’s hottest hunks sported white suits on the red carpet.

Steven Spielberg has described his semi-autobiographical picture The Fabelmans, delving into the teenage experiences that led him into filmmaking, as the most “daunting” project of his six-decade, blockbuster filmmaking career.

My favorite Toronto premiere memory was the one where eventual Best Picture winner Spotlight played to a raucous crowd reaction at the Princess of Wales Theatre, the emotion ratcheted up even further when the Boston Globe journalists who cracked the Catholic Church pedophile scandals took the stage and stood next to the actors who played them onscreen. It has been several years since TIFF has been able to show why this is such a special festival, because of the Covid epidemic and Canada’s protective lockdown of its borders. Last night marked a turning point for TIFF as a preeminent showcase for awards season movies, with the back to back Princess of Wales Theatre world premieres of Netflix’s Rian Johnson-directed Knives Out sequel Glass Onion, followed by the premiere of Amblin/Universal’s Steven Spielberg love letter to his family and a movie camera, The Fabelmans. Both of these films land squarely in the awards conversation.

Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, the director’s semi-autobiographical movie based on his own family and upbringing, has released its official trailer.

“The Fabelmans” made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, and a new trailer offers a glimpse of the latest film from acclaimed director Steven Spielberg.

Sift through some of his best work, and you will find that Steven Spielberg has always been a filmmaker charged by notions of love and ache for families, both those we are born into and those we select for ourselves. Though his tender devotion to domestic, often suburban bonds and rhythms—a well-documented and endlessly discussed through-line in his filmography—has perhaps never been as evident as in the soul-baring “The Fabelmans.” It’s Spielberg’s most personal film, one that gorgeously revives the memories of his childhood and youth with a lavish sense of wistfulness and an aptly Hollywood-ized, fable-like touch.  That beautiful Hollywood sheen is fitting for the on-screen autobiography of an escapist filmmaker, one whose name we came to pronounce synonymously with the magic of movies.

largely positive reviews, Steven Spielberg has just revealed the first trailer for “The Fabelmans,” a film about his own childhood, his parents and learning to love the movies. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday night, where Spielberg said that you shouldn’t believe the rumors that this movie marks his swan song or his retirement. “The Fabelmans” stars Gabriel LaBelle (“The Predator,” “American Gigolo” series) as 16-year-old aspiring filmmaker by the name Sammy Fabelman alongside his mother played by Michelle Williams and his father played by Paul Dano.

The Fabelmans is coming!

There is definitely a trend of late for film directors to take a look in thinly disguised cinematic memoirs of their early influences that shaped the artist and person they have become. Kenneth Branagh with Belfast and Paolo Sorrentino with The Hand Of God did it last year. Of course there is Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, others over the years. Sam Mendes, while not drawing a portrait of his younger self revisits the movie palaces of his youth in another 2022 offering, Empire Of Light, which premiered last weekend at Telluride and will also hit the Toronto International Film Festival. TIFF is also where the man I recently described as the GOAT, Steven Spielberg, has chosen to debut his own story where the names have been changed but the story is  clearly his. The Fabelmans basically chronicling his early Jewish family life and infatuation with making movies  had its World Premiere Saturday night, the first of Spielberg’s directed movies ever to premiere at a film festival. This one seems entirely appropriate, and it has been gestating in the director’s head ever since he and his co-writer Tony Kushner started kicking it around during the making of Lincoln over a decade ago. He says he finally made it primarily as a way to bring his late parents Leah and Arnold (to whom the film is dedicated) somehow back to his life. Movies can do that, and no one knows it better than Steven Spielberg.